


run river run

by starvels (dinosaur)



Series: Cap-IM Bingo [8]
Category: Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Domestic Violence, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, Past Abuse, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 07:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13518990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dinosaur/pseuds/starvels
Summary: Somewhere, something bigger than Tony's jaw is breaking.





	run river run

**Author's Note:**

> cw for domestic violence and what might be felt as dissociation. please be kind to yourselves and protect yourselves in your relationships. no one has the right to hurt or threaten you. you should always have access to a 'no'.
> 
> for my 2017.2 bingo card square: 'never again'  
>  
> 
> title from rivers by allman brown  
> \\\  
> Run, river, run to the sea  
> Water always wants to be free  
> Run, river, run over me  
> Water take away my memory  
> Water take away my memory

 

 

When Steve’s fist hits his jawline, Tony doesn’t think first about what it means for the plans up on his holographs, about the flash drive’s worth of data that prickled his security system an hour ago.

Instead, he’s processing.

Engine firing up, mind shifting into gear.

Hard drive skipping too hard over the same thought:

O _h._

_That was Steve?_

_That was_ Steve.

_Oh._

He’s not thinking about how the team is blocking his way out of the lab, how they’ve all come down here with Steve. They’re on his side, but what Tony is thinking about is the mark from Steve’s mouth that’s still on the inside of his hip.

He’s thinking that last night Steve kissed him and laughed his way through saying ‘I love you.’

There’s a patch of Tony’s back where Steve’s face presses when they’re lying in bed, that Tony’s own hand can’t reach, that Tony has starting thinking of as _Steve’s_.

Tony’s jaw throbs.

There’s a conversation to be had here. About trust and violence and their work, bleeding through their gloves and onto their palms and leaving bloody hand prints along each other’s chins.

There’s a conversation to be had here about how you don’t punch someone you’re sleeping with.

But Tony doesn’t have the words to start it.

He stares instead. Chin throbbing, blood slipping down the back of his throat and lips stinging papercut sharp.

Steve’s chest is rising and falling almost too fast to follow and Tony knows from the slant of his arm, the carelessness of his careful anger that this is not over. His arm is tensed for another throw. When he shifts forward, the movement echoes across the rest of the team, spread out, nervous-angry behind him.

Letting him make the move to punch again.

It makes the words speed up.

“Don’t,” Tony says, barely moving his jaw, pain striking his nerves, “you dare – “

“Don’t _I_ dar –“

“Ever,” Tony spits out, “Ever punch a lover.”

Steve freezes.

“ _Ever again_.”

It’s too loud in the room.

Distantly, Tony is aware the team is watching, is aware this entire room may hate his guts and want to tear him apart before the aliens get there first but, it’s hard to see around the bruise that’s Steve Rogers, aching in front of him.

Mostly he is aware, there are things about Steve that no files will ever say. Things that Steve will never say to anyone else, maybe, except to the dark corner of Tony’s sheets and the tear-damp lean of Tony’s chest. Except using drop off sentence that start with _my father, my ma, he -_

The things Tony knows about Steve are intimate. Brutal. Bruise tender.

But the things Steve knows about Tony are even moreso.

Because Tony doesn’t just give his love the keys to his heart, he gives the security codes to his past.

From the look on Steve’s face, he is remembering this, too. His eyes flicker right, flicker back.

“Tony,” he starts, not soft, but winding down, deflation pricked into him.

This is too much to say in front of the team, too much to ever say outloud but –

“I told you I would never suffer another lover hitting me,” Tony whispers. “When. You found me. _Then_.”

Someone else makes a cut off sound that prods pain along Tony’s jaw and into his eyes. He doesn’t look away from Steve.

“I –”

“And I told you,” Tony feels his hand grasping at his own shirt, “and you said, ‘Good. You never should.’”

Steve’s face is white, skin pinched too hard in between Tony’s rasped words.

“I wasn’t – _I_ wasn’t the one who kept this weapon – ”

Tony wonders how much it’ll hurt when he lets go.

He'd thought he was safe. He never thought that he'd have to use Steve's words again. Use Steve's words _for_ Steve.

“No,” Tony chokes out.

“No _what_?” Steve’s shaking. Hands that Tony has known in every way, clenching and unclenching. Feeling Tony across his knuckles, maybe.

Eidetic memory. Steve will never forget what it felt like to lay his anger across Tony’s face.

And Tony will never –

The processing stops.

No more.

“Just no,” Tony says around the blood in his mouth.

When he staggers to his feet, no one helps him. Steve sways as Tony passes, like he can’t decide whether to lean forward or back. It’s not a threat.

It could be, now.

Tony makes sure he doesn’t flinch, clenches like pushing the suit through rubble, but Steve’s movement still sends warnings up his spine, shoots of an ancient instinct – _this hurt you before, run human, run._ His breathing spikes, gets caught in his chest.

Steve stills, watching him, face shifting to something confused.

Something lost.

“No,” Tony says, one more time as he leaves.

The pain blossoms, holds.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is v obvs inspired by the scene in secret wars, where steve punches tony for being complicit in steve’s memory being erased by the illuminati, but instead is a sort of exploration of the recurring idea of tony stark letting people he loves punch him around, and the way that might mesh with tony's staunch I Believe In Cap's Words ideology. 
> 
> also steve is an ass sometimes but rarely does anything ever address him being violent/inflexible, particularly within the focus of being so at specifically tony, rather than other people. so! there's that too. 
> 
> comments and critiques always loved <3 thanks for reading !
> 
>  
> 
> find me on the tumbls [@starvels](http://starvels.tumblr.com) and this fic post [>here](https://starvels.tumblr.com/post/170283918776/).


End file.
